US attorney in Chicago who prosecuted Hastert resigns

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Dennis Hastert

US attorney in Chicago who prosecuted Hastert resigns

Dennis Hastert

CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. attorney in Chicago who oversaw the prosecution of former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert has resigned.

A prosecutor’s spokesman in Chicago says Zachary Fardon submitted his resignation Monday. It comes days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked 46 prosecutors who were holdovers from President Barack Obama’s administration to step down.

The 50-year-old assumed Chicago’s No. 1 federal law enforcement job in 2013. He came under pressure to put violent crime at the top of his agenda. But from the start, Fardon tempered expectations about what a U.S. attorney’s office could do.

Fardon’s highest profile prosecution was the one involving Hastert. The Illinois Republican is serving a 15-month prison sentence for breaking banking laws in seeking to pay $3.5 million in hush money someone Hastert sexually abused.